I've been following a daily (6 days a week) concentration practice for a few months and recently hit first Jhanna. I've managed to replicate that several times and have reached 1st Jhanna during 4 out of my last 5 sits.

My question is, how long should I be attempting to replicate reaching first Jhanna and at what point should I move on to trying for second Jhanna?

Am I better off trying to solidify it or moving forwards?

It may be worth mentioning that practice is concentration only right now and I'm not planning on starting insight until I reach forth Jhanna. So, I'm motivated to press on if that's sensible, but I don't want to move faster than is prudent.

Thanks very much to everyone on the site who has helped me so far and thanks in advance to everyone in this thread!

Metta

Hi William,

Ditto.

Okay, so the instructions are to master each jhana before progressing. The nun Khema has several jhana talks. feed://www.dharmaseed.org/feeds/teacher/334/ Sometimes she mentions just being in jhanas 1-3 for about 15 minutes (I don't really know how someone measures time in jhana... that's hard and I'm no jhana expert) before moving into new jhana. (I don't think this implies mastery; I have read that meditation masters look for several hours of stability before mastery is considered).

I'd use the word "suffusive" versus solidify. I would say, yes, get truly suffusive. Often I find for myself there's one point of discomfort that is dividing my attention, and thus jhana is not happening, though it can be close. For example, if the muscles under the ischial tuberosities (basically, the butt muscles) are feeling uneasy or the ankles are achey or the back has a discomfort... for me, this means my attention is divided and jhana is not occurring. That's okay. But it teaches me to make a sincere effort in the first few minutes of meditation, before the body is tired.

Regardess, it's a training. It takes time and patience, like playing piano, coding, driving, cooking, foreign language. So most important, to me, is sit down and get sincere right away: vitakkha, vicara.

When this is easy to do straight away and is suffusive, then move the mind to the pleasure (piti) there.

When there is a suffusive and lasting first jhana, the mind will naturally move to focus on the piti that's arising. That's a good time to go into it.

Regardless, you can't really do anything wrong by investigating a weak concentration when the concentration is in jhana -- because they are positive mental trainings flooding the mind with pleasantness.

What can happen though is that without really getting a suffusive concentration state, one can start to embellish a lowly uncollected experience, a non-concentrated experience, or a not-quite concentrated experience, a non-jhana, and that's too bad because suffusive concentration is remarkable. When it happens it gives confidence to the practice and teaches large parts of the egoic brain to stand-down, to trust that it can let go into the practice. This is when But even access (aka "neighborhood") meditation can get relaxing, alert and very refreshing.


]Better to do 15 minutes sincerely like this, than a bigger bit of time, I think.

That's all good advice.

I personally didn't initially get into them by going for the first one and then intending to have that stabilize for however long and then finally attempting the next one. This is actually a totally reasonable way to go about them, but it is not what I did.

I just concentrated, really concentrated, and went for smooth and wonderful. I did it on retreat, so I had more juice than usual, and so, depending on your practice setting, this may not be great advice, but, when your concentration is strong, they arise.

I found that the first would naturally start to pull to the second, like it would see it, see a better way, see something even nicer, and the pull would take over and there would be a shift at the end of the out breath and poof, there it was, second jhana, like an automatic transmission had shifted when it was time, and the same for the others. Just keep your foot on the gas, the gas of totally staying with the object or just whatever is in the attention field, solidly, smoothly, completely, and as the thing accelerates from that momentum, they should show up.

Get first done well, and second should appear, become obvious, become something the mind wants and sees and goes to, naturally inclining towards, or resolve and try to make it happen even if the mind isn't quite there yet, ok, possibly will work, but the pulling way had something to it.

Anyway, my take on it. Might or might not be helpful.

DanielTotally agree.

Daniel
Yeah, the fourth jhana actually hit with no formal preparation but after 4-6 weeks of sincere sensate awareness, "actualism" being coached with Tarin and Stef KD. That just astounded me that a mind could do something so locked-on, so useful, so wierd, 'caused me to turn back to dhamma-style practices. Then I had to spend months and months letting go of wanting it to happen again...

Thanks very much Katy and Daniel. My summary of your combined advice is that sometimes when I'm in first jhanna I should work at making it more sufficient, but that in general I should just work on developing concentration and as my concentration gets stronger or I'm able to schedule longer sits I will just naturally be pulled forward once the concentration is there. Thanks